Archive for the ‘Power Auras’ Category

About a week ago, I made the decision to purchase the T11 breastplate so that I could obtain the T11 4 piece set bonus. Now, ideally I’ll snag a T11 helm and swap back to the Magmaw breastplate, but for now, even with the T11 breastplate lacking spirit, it is still an upgrade provided that I keep the 4 piece set bonus active. That’s the trick though, isn’t it? To keep the bonus active you must maintain a 3 stack of lifebloom. “Easy!” you say! “No problem, I do that anyways!” you say! Yea…that’s what I thought too. And guess what – I’m wrong.

Even though I generally have 90%+ uptime on my lifebloom in any given encounter, I have found that I am only keeping my “Bloom” buff up about 75% of the time. To me, this is pretty unacceptable considering that I took a lesser optimized piece of gear on the premise that with the bonus active it’s still an upgrade. And so, I set out to try and remedy this problem and increase my “Bloom” up time.

I created the below Power Aura to help me recognize when I’ve lost the “Bloom” buff – indicating that I’ve let my 3 stack of lifebloom drop and need to get it back up ASAP.

The circle spins around – annoyingly – to get my attention straight away. The only thing I may change about it is the color. I have found that in Nef’s red tinted room the pink is rather difficult to see – and I’m wondering if a bright green circle might not be more visible. Regardless of if you use this aura, or create your own, I can’t recommend enough making sure you have an indicator to let you know when you’ve lost the “Bloom” buff to help ensure you are maximizing the bonus! :)

One thing that we did this expansion is make Power Auras a required mod for our progression raiding team. One of the reasons that we did this was because, as a team, we have historically struggled with situational awareness in our raids and we decided that we wanted to improve this. Now, Power Auras will not fix all problems – and people who are prone to stand in the bad will still generally stand in the bad, but this has helped a lot of folks learn encounters quicker and become more focused on key aspects of an encounter that could potentially lead into a wipe.

Now, please note that folks will absolutely still need to know what is going on around them, and Power Auras cannot play a person’s character for them. But they can help quite a bit, especially when learning a new encounter. In fact, we sometimes would stop a few minutes during learning phases to create an aura that we think would be helpful going forward.

For us integrating Power Auras into our raid team has been highly beneficial. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from our raiders on how much it has helped them on Boss Encounters and with learning new mechanics. And outside of that, we have also now have a lot of our raiders looking at what else Power Auras can provide them and creating and sharing their own auras amongst their classmates to help boost performance, which I think is fantastic.

Now, before I share the Auras that I created for our boss encounters, I want to talk about them for just a moment. First and foremost – you will see that many of them look identical. This is because we wanted the warnings to be simple and now overly complicated. We wanted them to be OH GOD THE BAD! And we wanted to brain to process the information quickly. Where the auras can be intuitive, I tried to make them as such. I think simplicity is important when creating Boss Auras because there is already a lot going on in encounters that your brain needs to process, without added another level of complication.

Additionally, all of my auras have auditory queues. This is because even with an OMG HUGE RED SKULL in your face, sometimes you just miss it. But it’s a little harder to miss a cackle or SHING! coming out of your computer. I find that auditory queues help a lot of people.

You may find other things that you’d like to add auras for on different boss encounters – this is just the list of auras that we’ve found beneficial to date.

After realizing that I did OUR ENTIRE RAID in my bloody CHEF’S HAT, I made the below extremely obnoxious Power Aura to tell me when I have my Chef’s Hat equipped. I figured that I’m probably not the only person to have done this, realized it, and been highly pissed off at themselves for their oversight, so I thought I’d share and save you my pain! ;)

Since my original Power Auras post is one of my most frequently visited pages, and because I’ve also had several queries as to what, if any, Power Auras changes I made since Cataclysm, I thought that it was ripe to offer an update on my Power Auras settings since my original post. That, and, uh, I also use this as a dump/back up for my exports in case I ever lose them! Prevents me from having to re-create the wheel :)

Before we get into the pictures and exports, I want to comment on my style. When I was learning Power Auras, the person that helped me learn the mod had told me that he tends to use icon settings so that he remembers what each setting is for, indicating that when he just used auras and squiggles and what not, he tended to forget what each “aura” indicated. As I went on my Powa journey, I found that this was true for me as well, so all of my settings will mirror icons.

Now, there is no “right” way to do this, so if you prefer “auras” and that works better for you, you should set those up! Everyone will find that something works different for them, and should experiment until they find something they feel comfortable with. For those that are interested in seeing how other druids utilize Power Auras, you can find some alternative settings from Jaslya, Keeva, Kae and Angelya.

When Blizzard announced/introduced their very own version of Power Auras into the default UI I was very skeptical. Were they going to be customizable? Will they show what I want them to show? Will they be adjustable at all? The answer was largely “no”. When I got into the PTR with Beru, and then subsequently into 4.0.1 when that went live, the first thing I wanted to know was how to turn the god awful things off.

They interfered with my current UI, I couldn’t move them, and about the only thing they show for resto druids was Omen of Clarity. Where was my low mana warning, and Innervate Ready, or Swiftmend Reminder? The bottom line was that, for me, the default auras were useless and in the way. I was going to continue to utilize my beloved, and highly customizable, Power Auras Classic. And after disabling the default auras I didn’t really give them much more thought. Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing on with my Power Auras exports, I thought I would share those I have set for my paladin next. Very similar to how I had Beru’s set up, they are fairly basic, but provide me with the information that I need to know, and even in their simplicity work very well for me.

Before we get into the pictures and exports, I want to comment on my style. When I was learning Power Auras, the person that helped me learn the mod had told me that he tends to use icon settings so that he remembers what each setting is for, indicating that when he just used auras and squiggles and what not, he tended to forget what each “aura” indicated. As I went on my Powa journey, I found that this was true for me as well, so all of my settings will mirror icons.

Now, there is no “right” way to do this, so if you prefer “auras” and that works better for you, you should set those up! Everyone will find that something works different for them, and should experiment until they find something they feel comfortable with. And now, to the pictures and exports!

Please note that this post has been updated for Cataclysm. You can find my new auras here. I’ve added several new auras, as well as updated all of my old ones! I would recommend disregarding this post and referring to the Cataclysm update. ~Beru

I’ve received a few requests for me to post my Power Aura settings, so even though they are almost embarassingly basic, I thought that I’d go ahead and share them.

Before we get into the pictures and exports, I want to comment on my style. When I was learning Power Auras, the person that helped me learn the mod had told me that he tends to use icon settings so that he remembers what each setting is for, indicating that when he just used auras and squiggles and what not, he tended to forget what each “aura” indicated. As I went on my Powa journey, I found that this was true for me as well, so all of my settings will mirror icons.

Now, there is no “right” way to do this, so if you prefer “auras” and that works better for you, you should set those up! Everyone will find that something works different for them, and should experiment until they find something they feel comfortable with. For those that are interested in seeing how other druids utilize Power Auras, you can find some alternative settings from Jaslya, Keeva, Kae and Angelya.

Creative Commons

If you intend to use anything on this website, please have the courtesy to attribute what you share, and offer links back to this site. If you are unsure if you can use the content found here, please do not hesitate to contact me directly. ~Beru